About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Car bombs aim at Shiite pilgrims in Kerbala, more than 50 dead

Grieving survivors of one of the blasts in Kerbala.

At least 51 people have been killed in twin suicide bomb attacks near the holy city of Karbala which appeared to target Shia pilgrims. Some 180 people were injured in the blasts, with the death toll likely to rise.
The first attack struck Karbala's northern outskirts, while the second blast occurred about 15km south of the city, the AFP news agency reported. The blasts occurred on two routes being used by pilgrims travelling to the city to take part in the Shia festival of Arbaeen, which marks the 40th day after the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein.
Earlier on Thursday, a roadside bomb was detonated among a crowd of Shia pilgrims at the Al-Rasheed vegetable market in southern Baghdad, killing one person and wounding nine, while another such blast in a central Iraqi town killed one and injured three, an interior ministry official told AFP.
In another incident, a suicide bomber blew up an explosives-packed car outside a police office in Baquba, central Iraq. Police say three people were killed including a traffic policeman. It was th second bomb against a police office in Baquba in as many days. The second bomb on Thursday, blew up just a few blocks away from the site of a large suicide car bomb attack against another security agency on Wednesday